Led Zeppelin (a double album), Atlantic.

'Physical Graffiti'

Reviewed by T.M. Robinson.

(Available from Collin Morris Record Shop, Mayfair Chambers,

48 The Terrace.

10% discount applies for Students).

'And our time is flying,
See the candle burning low?
Is the new world rising,
from the shambles of the old?
If we could put join hands,
If we could just join hands,
If we could just join hands (x1,000,000)'

Was this written in 1967 by a dim wit hippie in San Fran? Was he hanging around the street with huge ban-the-bomb pendants giving flowers to all the old fogies? No! But it's the best Robert Plant does in 79½ minutes of sensual whining. Don't expect anything more intellectually inspiring in the lyrics, and anyway, why should you get it? Its music, it has no obligations to anything but itself.

'Physical Graffiti' is a bath of creativity (and it's long enough to have a good soak). Every track presents a new idea completely worthy of the time devoted to it.

This album with its diversity is not just Led Zeppelin playing around with this and that, as graffiti implies. It is a selected accumulation of their imagination.

'Houses of the Holy', their last album, was nothing spectacular. Now they have reasserted themselves. Every one of Led Zeppelin's albums has in the past heralded a new approach to music. Unfortunately, things are not developing as fast or as noticeably as before. I did, in fact, notice some repetition, though very infrequently. The tracks seem to borrow the best aspects of their previous work.

Overall the album is not very heavy, it is not much use turning up the volume far. But it certainly is not wishy-washy. They manage not to build the tempo up too much, and create a tension which leaves them on the verge of exploding into a vicious blaring rock, devoid of the finesse typical of the complete album. In the wake of Us serenity I felt rather anxious. 'Kashmir' is a particularly good example of this effect.

Plant has not yet controlled his whining (very evident in The Rover') but fortunately it becomes less and less obvious as time moves on. He attacks each track with his whole self not just his voice. He is as physical as rock music can allow, yet he remains within the music.

Jimmy Page (guitar) again reinforced my high opinion of him with some extremely good, yet extremely simple work (e.g. his introduction' to Ten Years Gone'.) His lead playing is obviously his forte. Page brought most of the tracks to life, paving the way for the others to follow.

I'm not too sure what John Bohhan (drums) contributed. His contribution must have been greater than apparent for him not to be a freeloader. John Paul Jones (bass and organ) on the contrary adds a great deal to the completeness of the album.

If you buy 'Physical Graffiti' you certainly won't be wasting your money.

'Hot Tuna' Hot Tuna

Reviewed by Patrick O'Dea

Hot Tuna have been hanging on for over four years now, always in the hope of that break that would bring them some semblance of mass acceptance. As far back as I can remember they've played second siring to the Airplane, but though the roae's been rough their music hasn't suffered. While so many of their contemporaries have forsaken the blues-rock roots that launched them, Hot Tuna, a live album recorded during the group's formative years at the Chateau Liberte, deep in the Santa Cruz mountains, is an excellent representation of what Hot Tuan is about. Seven tough, tight and together tunes encompassing blues, blues-rock and just a bit of the old acid boogie fire. The songs' structures are both simple and true to classic forms. However, while they are unable to create the vocal timbres of the black blues, they compensate by boosting the instrumental energy levels making the material more intense.

Comparisons with the early, middle-period Airplane are inevitable, though I find their work equally compatible with some of John Mayall's finest hours. 'Want You To Know' is a solid, blues-based riff-rocker that could easily have been a part of Mayall's Decca material. And the guitar work of Jorma Kaukonen on 'Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning' is more than faintly reminiscent of Peter Green's contributions to Mayall's fare. Throughout the album, Kaukonen proves himself a well-versed, if not particularly innovative guitarist, and the contributions of his comrades (bassist Jack Casady, violinist John Creach, harpist Will Scarlett and Sammy Piazza, drums) leave no cause for complaint.

But as solid, well-rooted and energy-laden as it may be. Hot Tuna will still be lucky indeed to sell a couple of hundred copies in New Zealand. A crying shame if you ask me, for this is exactly what several ex-blues bands turned rock and roll heavies ought now to be sounding like.